


the weight of you

by snowdrops



Series: writing with snowdrops (dgm) [6]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Author's Favorite, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 23:48:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11520093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdrops/pseuds/snowdrops
Summary: Maybe it was appropriate, then, that the last words they spoke to each other would be there, the place where they had never broken their silence.





	the weight of you

**Author's Note:**

> I'm at your back door  
>  With the earth of a hundred nations in my skin  
>  You wouldn't recognize me  
>  For the light in my eyes is strange  
>  It was years ago, god knows  
>  When you strained to tell me your whole truth  
>  That you were not mine to save  
>    
>  \- [Enough To Go By](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVw8oWrHKEQ), Vienna Teng

The gates to the former Black Order are rusty from years of disuse and creak when he pushes them open, the padlock all but disintegrating under his touch. What used to house the Gatekeeper has now become a roosting spot for the black crows perched on the spikes of the gates, beady eyes watching him as he steps in.

Though his feet are sure, he treads gingerly, careful not to rouse the shadows creeping closer around every step he takes. Even with the end of the war a decade ago, darkness still lingers on the path he is now navigating, at the same time familiar and foreign.

He'd left his apprentice in the inn, saying that he had an errand to run, and now that his destination is in sight, apprehension and nervousness, the like of which he has not felt in years, begin to curl in his gut.

It's a phantom sensation, he knows, but the weight in his breast pocket seems to grow heavier as he approaches the yew tree that sits between the cliff face and the main building.

* * *

_"Take it."_

"No."

* * *

The yew tree conjures many memories, even for him who has dedicated his life to the art of recollection. How many times he'd wandered out for a breath of fresh air after being trapped in a dusty library for hours on end, only to be drawn towards the tree and finding Kanda settled under it with eyes closed and Mugen on his lap, and never a word when he sat down next to him, uninvited.

How many times he'd ventured here by his own volition, in search of the silence that Kanda himself seeked, how many times the previous Bookman had chided him upon his return for disappearing into thin air without a word.

And how few words they'd ever exchanged at the foot of that tree, despite the many they'd engaged in elsewhere - offhand jokes in the canteen, insults thrown across the corridors, small talk on the way to the train station, and breathy whispers under the covers.

Maybe it was appropriate, then, that the last words they spoke to each other would be there, the place where they had never broken their silence.

* * *

"Why?"

"You know why." _A Bookman doesn't keep momentos. A Bookman doesn't hold sentimentality. A Bookman only keeps memories, never anything corporeal._

Kanda had stretched out his hand anyway, because if nothing else, Kanda was stubborn. It was what had seen him through all the years - a blatant refusal to just kick the bucket, an insistence to live and die on his own terms and not by some twisted, demented way that had been planned by a team of monsters more interested in victory than in his survival.

And he would have liked to think himself invulnerable, with a mask stoic enough that nothing could shatter, a heart cold enough that nothing could touch, disillusioned with the evils of humanity that he had borne witness to. But when it came to Kanda he always had been weak, because of how dangerously human Kanda was but never allowed himself to be.

Pinned by Kanda's gaze he had given in, surrendered to the part of himself he always tried so fervently to deny, and accepted the small chunk of metal that Kanda had placed into his own open palm.

* * *

It is with the memory of Kanda's eyes boring holes into him and the warmth of his fingertips that he finally reaches that yew tree, now taller and grander than he remembers.

He wonders if the Order honoured Kanda's wish to have his ashes scattered here, to the wild and untamed winds, and finds his answer some meters away in the form of an unlabeled wooden marker forcibly driven into the rocks.

Against his will a smile forms; it feels like the one that he has long unlearned how to wear.

"Hey, Kanda. It's me."

His hand moves to retrieve the heavy load resting in his pocket, pulling it out at last, the words KANDA YUU inscribed on the back of the button, characters slightly faded from the many times he has run his fingers over them, remembering every bump and indentation, just like he has leafed through his own memories of Kanda, committing every expression and word to mind.

Sometimes he thinks it is a curse to be able to remember a dead person as though they were right in front of him, but at this moment standing in front of the marker he sees the Kanda he remembers - surly, grumpy, untouchable Kanda Yuu - looking back at him, lips drawn thin, unsmiling, yet also not frowning.

* * *

"I need to go," he'd said, after tucking the button away in his breast pocket, right above his heart. "Gramps will be waiting for me. Our boat leaves soon."

Kanda had merely inclined his head in acknowledgment, pensive silence his only answer.

"Bye, Yuu." He'd been using Bookman Junior's voice then, the cheery one that Kanda hated, and at his words Kanda had scowled.

"If you're going to leave, do it properly."

And he'd hated Kanda in that moment, because both of them knew that this would be the last time they would ever meet, and Kanda had in that one sentence forced him to bid farewell not as a Bookman, but as his 49th persona, Lavi.

But here, at the end of it all, he figured he could afford to give in to his own selfishness one more time, to the one person who would never tell his secrets.

"Bye, Kanda," he'd said, and if he'd stretched out his hand a bit as though to reach out for Kanda, before stopping shy of Kanda's uniform, neither of them made any comment before Kanda pulled him in for a bruising kiss, brutal and desperate and hungry and unspoken words all jumbled into one, but he could hear them all the same, loud and resounding in his ears.

He'd pulled away, heat of Kanda's lips still on his own, Kanda's hands digging into his shoulder blades, and he'd looked at Kanda with as much sincerity as he dared summon, offering up what little vulnerability he had to spare - though when it came to Kanda, he always had been.

"I won't forget you."

It was the closest thing to a _forever_ that he could ever hope to give Kanda - an unfading memory, and a story of the sacrifices that warriors of the War had borne. 

**Author's Note:**

> History remembers victory,  
>  but victory forgets the lost.  
>  The lost leave behind the fallen,  
>  and the fallen don’t speak of sorrow.  
>    
>  — Such is the truth of war and the stories left unwritten | [p.d](http://lostcap.tumblr.com/post/108963971303/history-remembers-victory-but-victory-forgets)
> 
> Title also from [Enough To Go By](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVw8oWrHKEQ) by Vienna Teng.
> 
> I haven't written Laviyuu in so long, but yesterday as I was listening to this song it suddenly struck me how apt the lyrics are for them. :') Please do go give it a listen!
> 
> [tumblr (rielity)](https://rielity.tumblr.com/) | [twitter (noyabeans)](https://twitter.com/noyabeans) | [dgm writing journal](https://laviyuu.dreamwidth.org/)


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